Miracle Pregancy?

Now, now... don't let the title of this post get you too excited. I'm still the same Wannabe Mommy (emphasis on the wannabe part). But a few weeks ago a funny thing happened to me on the way to the acupuncturist...

My last 3 cycles were ovulation-less (those white-coated types call this "annovulation"). Talk about a waste of a good period. As someone who's tried long and hard to get preggars, my ovulation was the one thing I could count on month after month. The rest of my cycle was another story. Irregular spotting. Unbalanced hormone levels. 18 day periods. Nothing about my period was normal except for my ovulation. Then one day it stopped.

But of course, I diligently kept going to my acupuncturist hoping to get back on track. And on one particular visit on cycle day 22, after feeling my pulse, my acupuncturist gets this funny spark in her eye. She checks the box on her intake form next to "slippery pulse". Next thing I know, her whole office is asking to palpate my wrists. I questioned one of the younger new interns what this was all about. "I've never felt a pregnant pulse before," she blurts out. A whaaat?? Were these people talking about me? I may not be a bio physicist, but I'm pretty sure you need to ovulate in order to get pregnant. Is my mind playing tricks on me? Did I ovulate and just miss it? Is this the miracle pregnancy I've been waiting for?

I have to admit, the feeling that they could possibly be right was intoxicating. Having all the assistants dote over me made me feel like a fertility rock star. I wasn't sure how to react. So as usual, I played it cool and tried not to get my hopes up. Time would tell.

The next 3 days it was hard to focus on anything but my "miracle pregnancy". My sister, nephew, and mom were in town at the time, and trying to act normal was next to impossible. Wouldn't it be great to be able to tell them the happy news in person? To share their laughs and squeals at home? To hand my husband a pee stick with 2 pink lines for his birthday?

Alas, the fantasy was not meant to last. Fast forward 3 days, and old Aunt Flo barges in to ruin the fun. *SIGH* Back to square one again.

Moral of the story: don't ignore the facts, no matter how enticing it is to do just that. I did not ovulate, and yes, turns out it is impossible to get pregnant without that pesky little egg. At least it was a refreshing change to feel real hope, if only for a nanosecond.

I'll say one thing for that cycle, it was anything but boring.

THOSE are my ovaries?

I saw my ovaries today on an ultrasound.

For a woman like me, trying reallllly hard to concieve, visiting the ultrasound wing of a hospital can be a crappy thing to do. Picture giddyily plump mothers-to-be holding hands with attentive husbands in a waiting room filled with Parents and Fit Pregnancy magazines. Then there's me, feeling like a square peg in a big 'ole round hole. (Thank God for the crumpled up old issue of People at the bottom of the magazine pile). But, it had to be done. My acupuncturist and gyno thought it a good idea to check in on some old fibroids to see how they were doing. Bummer for me, the only way to do that is thru ultrasound.

I won't go into the details.... (cold, gooey gel; big fat penis-shaped "wand")... but the good news was my 2 fibroids are now just one, and a very small one at that (only 1 mm... very insignificant). Pheeww! Of course, the technician scared the shit out of me when she moved the wand over to the left side of my abdomen, and began measuring this huge, round orb on the screen. "What's that?" I nervously asked. "It's a cyst," she said. Whaaaat?!? Forget the fibroids, now I have to worry about cysts?! Oh, Christ. "When do you usually ovulate?" She asked. I told her I'm an "early ovulator" and that I had tested positive for ovulation on my pee-pee stick yesterday (cd 8). "Oh, it's just an ovulation cyst. That's your egg getting ready to come out." After my stomach untwisted itself and my heartrate returned to normal, I thought ... WOAH. That big, perfect round orb could maybe, possibly, God-willing, be the start of my child.

How freakin' cool is ultrasound?

Welcome, Wannabes.

If you're anything like me (and since you're reading this I'm assuming you are), you're probably here to do one of two things: 1. Uncover that elusive, deep-seated secret on how to finally get pregnant, or 2. Find someone out there that can relate to your struggle. Unfortunately, I can't promise to deliver on #1, but I'll try to at least make some progress on #2. If nothing else, I hope this blog to be somewhat therapeutic for me and a few readers; an online fertility diary/support group of sorts. So please forgive the occasional endless, boring, sob-story-of-a-rant. We'll see how it goes.

Let me get a few things out of the way. First, I am not a writer. Sometimes I fancy myself pretty decent at it, but don't expect too much in the way of exotic prose. I picked up a thing or two minoring in English literature in college, and have hopefully assimilated a few tricks in my close proximity to copywriters as someone working in marketing. But it's not really my forte. Consider yourself warned.

Second, I'm not a doctor or therapist or any other kind of health-professional. However, since embarking on this journey of Trying To Conceive (TTC), I've been forced to learn much more than any average woman should ever know about estradial and follicle stimulating hormone and hysterosalpingograms. Sometimes I scare myself.

Third, you might not want to read on if you're someone knee-deep in the trenches of IVF or IUI or ICSI or I-anything. Not that I have anything against those procedures. I've tried most of them myself. It's just that right now my focus is more on improving my fertility, um ... naturally. OK, so I'm 38. And, yes, I've been TTC for four year. And yes, I'm acutely aware of the statistics. But I'm hell bent on staying off the Western Medicine hamster-wheel of infertility treatments. Artificial over-priced drugs taken to pound my ovaries into overdrive can't be the only solution. There has to be a better way.

Don't get me wrong—I'm not naive enough to believe that a few shots of wheatgrass and a yoga class are enough to make you pregnant. (Trust me, I've tried it). But I'm thinking that maybe it's a start. Maybe I'm on to something. It's at least a direction I can feel good about.

If any of the above sounds good to you, please join me. I'll try not to disappoint, and possibly even learn something along the way.